Lisa Atkinson

Long-time foodie and gourmet home cook Lisa Atkinson created Paradise Hand Pies, LLC (…and Catering) to bring the art of the savory and sweet hand pie to Hawai’i.

She started cooking when she was eight years old. It wasn’t until after she lived in France for a year that she began to educate and expand her palate and learn to appreciate local food culture, including her own Native culture. She’s traveled to the far corners of the world searching for the perfect hand pie ingredients. She’s cooked elk, duck, and buffalo from Oregon; sampled numerous varieties of pork in Sardinia; tasted red deer with gravy, and whitebait sandwiches in New Zealand; shared community favorites of musk ox, moose, Eider duck, halibut, and crab in remote villages in Alaska; and downed local meat delicacies in Ireland and Scotland. Transplanted from the rainy Pacific Northwest to sunny Hawai’i Island, she’s decided that there is no time like the present to embark on a new adventure to blend her passion for food with her love of sharing that food with her new community. Blending Island favorites with a global perspective, the results are delicious.